CLEVELAND, Ohio — In this episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast, Ethan Sands and Jimmy Watkins dig into the Cleveland Cavs’ 131-122 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves. They focus on the team’s recurring inability to play a complete four-quarter game.
Takeaways:
1. Crippling Inconsistency Defines the Team
The Cavaliers’ loss to the Timberwolves encapsulated their season-long struggle with inconsistency, which the hosts described as the team’s most frustrating trait. Despite leading at halftime, a third-quarter collapse where they were outscored 43-22 demonstrated an inability to sustain competitive effort and execution for a full game.
2. Defensive Identity Has Vanished
The team’s defensive identity, a hallmark of their success last season, has completely eroded, particularly on the perimeter. The hosts noted that the Cavs’ defense has ranked near the bottom of the league in defending the three-point shot over the last 10 games, a direct result of missed rotations and an inability to run shooters off the line.
3. Unsustainable Reliance on Donovan Mitchell
A significant concern is the team’s over-reliance on Donovan Mitchell, whose minutes and usage are at an unsustainable level. Mitchell has already played nearly as many 35+ minute games as he did all of last season because the team needs him to expend massive energy just to stay in games, raising alarms about potential fatigue and playoff readiness.
4. Evan Mobley’s Continued Passivity
Evan Mobley continues to show flashes of his potential but remains frustratingly passive, especially in the second half of games. Against the Timberwolves, he took only four shots after halftime, failing to assert himself offensively and provide the consistent secondary scoring punch needed to alleviate pressure on Mitchell.
5. Persistent Identity Crisis and Lack of Accountability
Almost halfway through the season, the Cavaliers are still struggling with an identity crisis and a failure to make effective in-game adjustments. The same recurring problems—poor transition defense, offensive stagnation in the half-court, and a lack of physicality—persist without clear evidence of internal accountability or strategic changes to fix them.
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Transcript
NOTE: This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and could contain misspellings and errors.
Speaker A: What up Cavs Nation? I’m your host, Ethan Sands, and I’m back with another episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast. Joining me Today, Jimmy Watkins, cleveland.com columnist. And we’re coming to you guys after the Cavs latest loss, 131-122 to the Minnesota Timberwolves. And Jimmy, the box score might make this game look more friendly than it was. Obviously. The Cavs took a four point lead going into the second half, but then they ended up trailing by 20 points in the third quarter alone. They gave 43 points in the third quarter while scoring just 22 points themselves. There’s a lot to unpack here, but I want to just get into your raw, instant reactions to tonight’s contest because again, like I said, there’s a lot of meat on this boat.
Speaker B: Tonight is a pretty good encapsulation of what makes this team so frustrating because you see the glimpses still, you see the elite offense. I think in the first half I liked how Evan Mobley was playing and you saw moments, moments of engaged defense against this Timberwolves team, which frankly looks, it’s a two way street. It’s a streaky offense. The thing is you can, you can shut their water off for long stretches. We saw that in the first half. We saw it again late in the fourth quarter. Like this is, this is a game where as, as we go over the course of it, the Timberwolves are known for closing games poorly. So if I just kept thinking, okay, you just keep, keep hanging around in this game like they were in the first round. They had control of it in the first half. And even after the first initial run, the third quarter, you hang around, there’s, there’s going to be an opportunity for this to swing back. But it’s just, it’s so much of what we’ve seen all year. It’s the runs that don’t stop leaking. It’s the offense. When the shots aren’t falling, it bleeds over in some of the ugliest ways. It’s the transition defense, it’s the miscommunications in Afcorton. It’s losing track of shooters. You can’t put three good quarters together. Again, you see, you see the potential and for some stretches of this season, we weren’t even seeing that. So I guess, I guess that’s some weird form of progress. But to me, we’re, I mean, we’re almost halfway through the season at this point and I’m, I’m starting to think of like the old, the old axiom you are the things that you do the most. And the things that the Cavs do the most are try to flip the switch in the regular season. And we’re running out of wiggle room here to turn a blind eye to that. We’re not running out of time. Like, it’s here. It’s here. More likely than not, this is who the Cavs are at this point. Like how. How long can we just keep waiting and waiting? Well, okay, maybe, maybe, maybe. What are you waiting for at this point? I know Justine Wade’s still hurt. Max Drew still hurt. Yada, yada yada. The core pieces are mostly intact and they just can’t stay engaged for four quarters.
Speaker A: I am over the moral victories of this season. I’m way past. Oh my God. The first half looked great. They were able to maintain a lead against the Minnesota. I’m over that. I’m done with it. I feel like we’re past the point of obviously, the Cavs talk about process and how they get there and Kenny Atkinson talks about it after the game. It’s hard to beat a team that shoots 53% from deep. Okay, you knew coming into the game. You can’t allow Dante DiVincenzo to. You have to run him off the line. You cannot allow him to get open looks from 3. The rotations were bad defensively and we continue to harp on this point. The defensive identity for this team has vanished and I wrote about it in my preview article for today simply about how this Cavs team was going to have to play to win tonight’s game or what was going to happen. And I said, against a team that scores efficiently and gets to the free throw line, one or two missed rotations can snowball quickly. After the game, Kenny Atkinson said, oh, we missed some switches. We could have maybe changed some things in small situations where it would have led to better defensive adjustments or better defensive sequences. Yeah, well, one turns into two and with this team, two turns into five in that kind of sequence. And this team has continued to play in inconsistent basketball for four quarters. They have not played to my standard four quarters of hard work basketball effort induced basketball. I was excited in the first quarter, Jimmy, when I saw DeAndre Hunter push Rudy Gobert twice and get a double technical life. I was excited about what that could mean for the physicality that they were going to ensue against the Minnesota Timberwolves and how they were going to deal with that. That gave me hope to what was going to happen throughout the remainder of the contest. Because in tonight’s game. DeAndre Hunter was one of the Cavs best players and I’m going to rattle these stats off really quickly to just give a indication of how bad the Cavs played over the stretch. Again, they took a four point lead into the break. The Cavs finished with multiple players with minus 15 or worse in the plus minus ranking. Jared Allen was a minus 29 in tonight’s game. He had 11 points and 10 rebounds. Darius Garland was a minus 24. He had 16 points and eight assists. Craig Porter Jr. Was minus 17. It was interesting to see Craig Porter Jr. Make his first start tonight. And ho Kenny Atkinson says, hey, your assignment’s Anthony Edwards. Good luck with that. There’s different indications that Kenny Atkinson keeps making life difficult on Craig, trying to reward in different situations, whatever. But then you look across the lineup you have Jaylon Tyson minus 5, Evan Mobley plus 2, Donovan plus 4, DeAndre Hunter plus 13. And the biggest one when you look at the Minnesota Timberwolves was the Nas reed was a minus 21. And guess what the Minnesota Timberwolves did in the fourth corner at the 6:30 minute mark when Nas Reed wasn’t making an impact, they sat him. They took him out of the game for the remainder of 6:30 and that’s how they were able to hold onto the contest. So I think it’s ideal when we talk about the combinations, the lineups, the rotations that Kenny Atkinson has put together. Sure, we’re still in this experimentation period, but you have to find something that works and stick with it. DeAndre Hunter is playing better physically against a more physical team. You keep with him. If you see CPJ or Sam Merrill is struggling to guard Anthony Edwards, you change the defensive sequence or the identity of what you want to do. Jimmy, there’s a lot going on here. What do you think the Cavs needed to do for tonight’s game to change going forward?
Speaker B: It was just meeting the T wolves energy and physicality over long stretches. Right. And to that point, to your point about Craig, I thought he was a strange choice to fill Dean Waite’s spot in the starting lineup given that the Cavs are already very small out there. So you’re going three guard, three small guard lineup against one of the bigger, more physical teams in the NBA. Right. And then Kenny, Kenny was saying after the game he thought Craig did a decent job on Ants early on. I mean, I guess ant was clearly laboring tonight and we finished the game with the Cavs having to throw two at Ant everywhere he went. And they were, they were Blitzing them pretty hard around pick and rolls, which is how they got a lot of these threes. They were not rotating very well behind those traps. But I think it was defense. I think it was the energy. I mean, it’s checklist of things that we’ve been saying seeing all year. The defense, the energy to Donovan, Mitchell Reliant on offense. Evan Mobley, pretty promising first half. I jotted down a couple things with a lefty finish over Rudy Gobert at the. At the rim when he had a Runway. Oh, I like that. That’s a little bit more verb than I’ve seen from Evan Mobley all year. Nice little post move. Jump hook over Rudy Gobert. And Brad Doherty was saying, I’ve been telling Evan he can get that jump hook off anytime he wants. And then, and then, and then third quarter comes around. Moby takes one shot like the record is broken. The record is broken at this point because it keeps spitting out the same sounds. We keep seeing the same things that hurt this team. Again, there were long stretches from the. Probably about the midway point of the first quarter to the end of the first half. The Cavs looked awesome tonight. And the start that. The making the comeback at the beginning of the fourth quarter, they looked awesome again. But I no longer care to focus on those stretches because the inconsistency is the point. Right. Like, they’re trying to project confidence and good feelings right now. But if you showed this, if you showed these recent games, yes, they beat the Pacers. Yes, they had moments against a good Timber Wolves team, which is. I mean, Timbers are what, fourth or fifth best team in the Western Conference. Like, this is probably a tier 2 team that we’re talking about here. You showed this to last year’s Cavs. They would tell you this ain’t up to their standard. I know they’re on the road. I know not everybody is up to par. Darius go questionable before the game. Whatever. I’m just seeing too many repetitive themes here for me to. For me to embrace those moments of brightness.
Speaker A: Yeah. And they won so many areas of tonight’s game that you would have highlighted before the game. Right. The bench points, 42 to 19, which could also go in the other direction. That means the starters were losing minutes against the Minnesota Timberwolves. Starters. Points in the paint. The Cavs had 66 points in the paint, which means they weren’t over relying on the three point shot. That’s a good thing. The points in the fast break. That’s a good thing. 22 to 20. The Cavs especially on the offensive end. We know this, Jimmy are so much better, are so much more fluid, have the ball movement, the body movement when they’re in transition. I thought when Jaylon Tyson, Darius Garland and Sam Merrill were on the floor together early on into the game, the ball was moving in transition, fluidly. It was moving so quick that you were like questioning whether or not it was a good pass or not. And it ended up working out because it had the Minnesota Timberwolves defense moving in flux while they were moving back in transition. And it makes teams more difficult to guard. And the predictability, the unpredictability of the Cavs is something that we’ve talked about them needing and getting back to. But when they get into the half court, they have so many different problems that the Cavs have not been able to adjust to. And the Minnesota Timberwolves, a top six defense in the NBA, is going to be able to sniff out these difficulties for the Cavs and attack and hound Darius Garlo, who came in, as Jimmy mentioned, with a hand injury, playing through that, oh, you know I’m attacking that right hand. You know I’m attacking Donovan Mitchell because he has to get out the ball. You know Craig Porter Jr. Is going to get attacked when he has the ball on the floor. Sure, Kenny might have talked about needing another ball handler with all this pressure on the floor. I get it, but there’s different areas that we have to talk about that the Cavs need to exploit better. 17 turnovers for the Minnesota Timberwolves that only converted to 24 points off turnovers that should be double. You need to get back into, into the flow of what you’re good at, relying on who you are. Again, this gets back to the whole identity conversation, the identity crisis that we continue to have with this cavalier team. It consistently feels like this team is trying to find out who it is, which lineups work. And there’s too many questions either on the court or behind the scenes that have not been answered and continue to make things difficult, not only on Kenny Atkinson when he’s trying to make decisions, he’s. And also making him look worse off than he might actually be when it comes to the players on the floor and the rotations that he’s choosing because there’s so much going on that we don’t have the answers to. And it feels like there’s multiple things that the Cavs need to address. And one of the things that I’ve always enjoyed about watching Anthony Edwards post game press conferences, even after losses, is he addresses it as it is, we aren’t good enough, we haven’t played good enough, we have not been who we’re supposed to be. And he’ll call out certain areas while other players and other more media trained players in the NBA will be like, oh, well, this is an area, but I’m not going to necessarily tell you what it is. That’s the difference. The accountability that is willing to be had after games, during games, pre game, and meeting that to get to where the Cavs want to go. And it doesn’t feel like they have that look.
Speaker B: I would hope, and I assume that they’re saying different things behind closed doors than they are saying in the public. Different teams handle this different ways, right? The Cavs have chosen deliberately to take a more forgiving tone in a lot of their press conferences, post game press conferences this year. But again, I would say that doesn’t match the standard that you’re setting for yourself. And when the same problems persist over and over and over and over again, I do wonder about what the messaging is behind the scenes because whatever’s being said, however it’s being delivered, that’s just not getting through because things are not changing. Again, in many ways you can take snapshots of this game and say it’s pretty encouraging. Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. Results are the same and the pitfalls are the same. One other thing I wanted to highlight, uh, tonight was Donovan Mitchell’s 15th game this season playing 35 minutes or more. He had 16 of those all last season in a vacuum. Maybe not the worst thing in the world, right? Remember last year we were talking about Donovan running out of gas in the playoffs because last year was the ultimate load manage mode and he wasn’t ready to play 40 minutes when it came time. But there’s a difference between, there’s a difference between an intentional stretch of minutes, a plan, season long plan to ramp it up, which he did come into the season saying he was ready to do that and needing to do this. The Cavs played, I think Darius, Evan and Donovan all 12 minutes of the fourth quarter tonight because they needed to have all of them on the court to keep pace with the Timberwolves. Donovan Mitchell is expending all this energy because he needs to, he needs, he’s on the court as much because he needs to be. And there’s a different tenor to the way he plays because they need him, because they rely on him so heavily. So I just keep going back to what Kobe said before the, before the season, which was he’s already in mid season form and we’re already trying to hold him back. Serena Winters had a sideline report tonight where she’s talking about Donovan taking accountability in a huddle for being tired during a fourth quarter possession tonight. That’s, that’s because this guy’s empty in the gas tank during these regular season games. They, they as a team are, are emptying the tank because they’re falling behind in this game. 19 point in, in the matter of five minutes. They’re blowing all the hard work they put in in the first half and falling behind by 19 points against one of the best teams in the league. And they run out of gas at the end of games as a result. This is not, not sustainable, man. That’s not. This little boy one of the best fourth quarter teams and I don’t care about that. A lot of talented teams that fall behind double digits can, can come back. The really good teams are the ones that never fall behind in the first place. Right? I’m keeping my eye on the Donovan thing. I know they, I know they rested him the other night. They’re still trying to be conscious about that, but I just don’t like it. I don’t like the way that. I don’t like the way the team looks. I don’t.
Speaker A: Wait.
Speaker B: I don’t like the way this Donovan situation looks right now. We’re in January. He’s already played almost as many 35 minute games this year as he did last year. That doesn’t bode well down the stretch. Man. This guy’s had nagging injuries during the last two playoff runs. Okay? I don’t like that.
Speaker A: Yeah, and to your point, Jimmy, like Donovan came into the season thinking he had to be in the best shape because he had Darius and Max sidelined. He knew that he was going to have to be this MVP caliber level of Donovan Mitchell. But we’ve talked about this in the past. He. Him having to ramp up in the fourth quarter or him and the Cavaliers believing that they have to ramp up in the fourth quarter isn’t beneficial to them. It’s not who they’re supposed to be. And again, I reiterate from last season, it was easier for them because they were up 20 or 30 points. So when teams came back, they were like, oh, look at them, they’re working so hard to get within five points. Darius Garland, here’s the ball. Donovan Mitchell, here’s the ball. Take over in the fourth quarter. Do what you’re paid to do because we already know you didn’t have to expend that much energy to get here. That’s what’s different about this season and the perspective of Donovan Mitchell. And obviously we know that he’s still playing to an mvp, all NBA first team caliber. But whether or not he can trust other players around him to make decisions, to play hard when he’s not on the floor is something that’s difficult. And it seems like the energy and the intensity dips. And the other thing about this is you mentioned the fourth quarter being gassed, being tired. And Donovan Mitchell has mentioned at various occasions having to get through the mental fortitude of playing tired of playing through fatigue. And at some point somebody’s going to have to tell Donovan Mitchell, it’s normal for you to feel like you are exhausted because you’ve taken over a majority of the load in multiple fourth quarters. Maybe if you expanded that energy a little bit more throughout the other three quarters, you wouldn’t feel that way in the fourth. But still the fourth quarter where you need somebody to produce, you need your all NBA, your MVP candidate to produce, that’s when you can’t be tired. That’s when mentally you, as Donovan Mitchell said you would need to push through. But sometimes that’s not physically possible. Especially if, and this is my tripe with Evan Mobley today was his decision making was poor. There were opportunities to attack the painted area when he had a smaller player on him and he didn’t do it. There were passes that Aaron Mobley made that weren’t necessary. There was a play in the fourth quarter where he had a wide open three point shot attempt and went up for the shot and he had a smaller defender on him and tried to dish it out, that can’t happen. If you’re telling me that you’re going to be a superstar. If you’re telling me that you’re going to be donovan Mitchell’s number one, A1, B, number two, whatever you want to say, that cannot happen for somebody who the Cavs are relying and depending their future on. Because at some point this is going to turn from a Donovan Mitchell conversation to to an Evan Mobley conversation.
Speaker B: I think the Donovan Mitchell conversation is an Evan Mobley conversation and a Darius Bellum conversation. Donovan Mitchell, D.C. drake coming into tonight was 32.7%. It’s the highest he’s had in Cleveland so far. Not by a ton percentage point here or there. Donovan Mitchell’s always going to be a high usage player, but Donovan Mitchell’s usage rate in Utah the last year of his time there was 32.9%. That’s pretty darn similar. And that’s not where I think the Cavs again, it’s not that dissimilar from the last two years he was here either. But I don’t think the Cavs plan by year four of this construction was for Donovan Mitchell to have to expend that level of energy on a team with two young co stars that could grow alongside him. This is what the last four years, last three years have been for to get you guys ready. Year four, we’re still, we’re still here. Kristen Dobbins still got to play hero ball. Donovan’s still the only guy that can get to the free throw line. Donovan’s still the guy. I mean, like, Darius was great in the fourth quarter the other night without Donovan. But back to our conversation about Donovan getting his body in shape because he knew he wasn’t going to have key pieces before the season. Do you think he still, he thought he’d still need, need to be doing this in January?
Speaker A: That’s what I’m saying.
Speaker B: No, it’s alarming. It’s alarming. Even, even in the moments with the Cavs offense looks awesome. I know. That’s what Don Mitchell, Don Mitchell’s supposed to be the fail safe at the bails you out at the end of games and end of possessions. I understand that. It’s still happening far too often for.
Speaker A: My liking and for people who are going to look at me crazy and say, oh, Evan Mobley was 8 of 11. He had 19 points. Yeah, okay, but he also had three assists and three turnovers. He wasn’t able to hold onto the ball when it was passed to him. Some of the turnovers that were from other players, obviously Donovan had four turnovers. Darius Garland had two turnovers. Some of them were directly correlated to Evan Mobley simply not being able to hold onto the ball or not being ready for the ball coming to him. So, yes, he was 8 of 11, which is 72.7% from the field. But there’s other things other than shot attempts that Evan Mobley needs to improve on. And the first thing, and he’s so good at it when he has it going. His passing acumen, his, his iq, his decision making. Kenny Atkinson continues to refer to this Cavs team needing to get better at how they make decisions. It’s shot attempts, it’s shot profile, it’s passes, it’s how they move defensively, it’s the rotations they’re making. There was a play defensively when obviously DeAndre Hunter is guarding Dante DiVincenzo in the corner. There’s a play happening over on the other wing and one of the Minnesota Timberwolves players is, is sitting on the right wing unguarded. And sure you don’t want to leave Dante, but in that case, that pass is going to be so far that you should have time to circle back. You cannot leave somebody wide open. So there’s so many decision making thoughts that is happening within this organization that have not panned out the way that they thought. So, Jimmy, the biggest portion of this is that they play the Minnesota Timberwolves again on Saturday at 1 o’ clock at Rockin Arena. And not only did the Minnesota timberwolves get up 20 points on the Cleveland Cavaliers today, even in the fourth quarter, they looked like they were having fun against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Rudy Gobert threw a behind the back pass to the corner that should indicate how the Minnesota Timberwolves were thinking about playing against the Cavs down the stretch. They were not taking it seriously. And that should be the most irritating thing for this Cleveland Cavaliers team that came in with not Eastern Conference finals aspirations, championship aspirations.
Speaker B: Yeah, we’re so far from that right now. We are so far from championship. We talked about this, I don’t know, two, three weeks ago when I was saying we’re still waiting for the Cavs to get to their baseline that they entered this season with, which again, the baseline was second round out. Not nearly mentally tough enough. I’m still waiting for them to get back to that right now. You were talking about Rudy. He was real comfortable tonight. Dribble. He was. I mean, he was dribbling way too much, but he was dribbling. He had a dribble drive on Jared Allen. He had a move that. Brad Dougherty called this on the broadcast. Rightfully so. I was thinking the same thing when he said it. They hit Rudy. I think it was a, a trap of ant up top. And they hit Rudy on a short roll and, and Rudy fumbled the ball and was looking around for the right person. It’s. I mean, it took him forever to find an open man. At the end of the play, he still found a wide open man standing right next to him for a layup. And it’s just, you have to be faster than that. Some of these. You’re not just a step behind, you’re two passes behind. Sometimes it feels like they’re just, they’re just not fast enough and they’re just not the Timberwolves for all of their flaws. And at the end of Games, they fall apart sometimes. Their offense isn’t they. They kind of still like ants, kind of the point guard and Dante brings the ball up. They want, like, Mike Conley was a guy that they traded to fill that role. Now he’s almost 40. Their offense is imperfect, but they make up for it with verve and plan like some sobs. And they come out of the gates tonight. Yeah, they’re making shots, but they come out of the gates punching, man. And the Cavs are like. Takes them a while to wake up, right? I feel like that’s happened out of the half the same thing, Tim.
Speaker A: Wolves come out on fire.
Speaker B: The Cavs are like, what just happened? And that just happens far too often. One more thing I want to say about Evan Mobley. It’s not just the shot attempts, but it is still the shot attempts. Second half, this dude took four shots. He played 21 minutes. Every player on the court who was on the court for longer than 15 minutes in the second half took more shots than Evan Mobley. What’s going on here, man? How many times do we have to have this conversation before we accept maybe.
Speaker A: This is just what is.
Speaker B: Maybe this is just what is right now. How many times?
Speaker A: It’s crazy. Yeah. Especially coming from somebody that was a second team all NBA player last year and all star and came in with the expectation of, oh, this is your floor. This is what it’s supposed to be every season. Defensive player of the year. Sure, we talk about him being what he was supposed to be defensively at deter and someone that made life difficult at the rim, but there needs to be twofold of this conversation, and I’m gonna end here, Jimmy, because as we know, the Cavs play the Minnesota Timberwolves again on Saturday. The one thing that I thought the Cavs did probably best tonight was not fouling until down the stretch when they needed to. They held the Minnesota Timberwolves to 17 free throw attempts. That’s really, really good. They came in averaging like 27 a game. And the funniest portion of this to me, the Minnesota Timberwolves almost shot the same percentage from three point range that they did at the free throw line. The Minnesota Timberwolves were 20 of 38 from 3 point range, 52.6%. They were 9 of 17 from the free throw line, 52.9%.
Speaker B: And people will say. And people will say, oh, shooting a lot. Because the Cavs didn’t make their threes. The Timber was in. The Timberwolves made more than you would expect. Kenny was talking about them packing the pain and you know, sometimes we’re trying to live with those. Like I’m not trying to hear that right now. The Timberwolf shot above their expected percentage because you left them open above the expected amount of times. They were expected to be left open. They were comfortable. They were comfortable all night. That’s why they were making those shots. And frankly, you left a lot of the wrong people open. NAS Reed version effective as he was, he had two threes tonight. Dante DiVincento hit six threes tonight. Anthony Edwards was open in the corner on multiple occasions. Four three pointers. Like I don’t want to hear any of that right now. I, I think Cavs fans are feeling the exact same way right now of all that stuff, shooting luck and oh, we, you know, we had good moments that that applies to teams that, that have their ish together. All right? This team does not. And so until they prove to us that they do, you got to take everything with a, with a magnifying glass. You got to scrutinize everything they do because letting them off the hook is not working.
Speaker A: The Cows need to adjust their game plan based on what is happening. Hey, guess this. During the game, if the Minnesota Timberwolves are not getting to the paint and you’re having success in that and you’re leaving them open, hey, maybe you run them off the line and from the three point line in the second half a little bit more. Anyway, here’s something that I just found about the Cavs three point defense over the last 10 games. They are 28th in three point makes and 30th and three point percentage allowed over their last 10 games. That means that the point of attack defense that Kenny Atkinson has raved about that Ty Jeroen got kicked off this team for not being able to do at that level is not panning out the way that they wanted. Again, something needs to shift. If the Cleveland Cavaliers scheme procedure principles are not working, there needs to be adjustments not only in game, which might be most important because things happen rapidly but especially when you have time to review these things game to game. Things need to change and if they don’t because of the roster that the Cavs have currently, that means that the February 5th trade deadline is going to be a whirlwind for this Cavs organization. But with all that being said, that’ll wrap up today’s episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast. But remember to become the Cavs insider and interact with Chris, me and Jimmy by subscribing to Subtext. Sign up for a 14 day free trial. Or visit cleveland.comcavs and click on the blue bar at the top of the page. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. All you have to do is text the word stop. It’s easy, but we can tell you that the people who sign up stick around because this is the best way to get insider coverage on the Cavs from me, Chris and Jimmy. This isn’t just our podcast, it’s your podcast. And the only way to have your voice heard is through subtext. Y’ all be safe. We out.